Fading
by Skyress1
Summary: With Bill Denbrough's memories slowly receding, it is not only his little brother, Georgie that begins fading with them. Angelica, a girl that Bill Dengbrough likely shouldn't have befriended in the first place, had disappeared from his life and now from his memories. Disclaimer: I'm really glad that I do not own It. Do you know how much trouble it would be feeding it!


**Fading**

He'd known her. That girl. Lost in the breeze, hazel eyes fading away from sight though looking straight at him. He can't even stammer, his voice completely gone.

Helplessly, he stands there, eyes wide as he watches her memory vanish in front of him. He'd failed. And now she was gone. Just like Georgie. Like all the others; the ones he hadn't saved. Time might let him forget, but the scars won't heal. Every night he would wake, covered in ice-cold sweat and his mind flooded with regret.

"A-Angie..." The words would finally flow off the tongue, not as smoothly as he would have hopes, but audible. Tears came next, just like they always had when times were truly rough and they'd wash away those thoughts, dumping them on the other side, where they would lie stranded and forgotten until the nightmares returned. They always had returned. Without them, he wouldn't be that broken ruin of a man, a shipwreck in the middle of an ocean of bad. Without them, his name would have never been uttered. His stories would remain as dreams. Bad dreams, but dreams nevertheless. Tears, they proved it had been real, that this was possible. And his memories served well enough for a few hellish horrors.

His wife, Audra, would ask at times, who this 'Angie' was. In truth, he'd respond, " _I don't know_." He hadn't, too. As the years went by, the girl from his dreams became less and less solid, much like Georgie himself.

* * *

 _There would be days when William Denbrough - called Bill by his friends, or even Big Bill - wouldn't hang around with his usual group. It hadn't been out of resentment; he'd always enjoyed Eddie's company and occasionally, Stan's and Richie's company would be refreshing and fun. Yet, even then, there were days when building dams and riding bikes wouldn't quite cut it. Or Richie's Voices._

 _Sometimes, ten-year-old Bill would rather just walk up certain streets, waiting for Her to pop up. He wouldn't call his interest in the girl a "crush", or anything like that. Whether because he was afraid that it may well have been one, or because hadn't blushed before at the mention of her name, he hadn't felt butterflies fluttering in his stomach upon seeing her, he didn't know. He just... found her interesting._

'That's all,' _he'd think._

 _Speaking of butterflies, he'd known about her admiration for them too. They're strange things, butterflies. To think something as plump and odd looking could transform into a creature of serene beauty... there was really little wonder why the girl found them interesting. She would smile in the summer when the grass and patches of flowers were full of them and whenever she smiled, Bill, standing not too far away, would smile with her. Her emotions were infectious like that._

 _Though, for all his attempts to spend his time with her, he had never spoken to her. Not once. He'd feared that his accursed stutter would ruin everything, would persuade her to turn her back to him._

 _He'd follow at times, though. With his bike at his side and him ready to dash in case of the worst scenario. It would make others wonder why he didn't ride the_ bike _, or why he had such an oversized bike in the first place, but he'd not been bothered by that thought._

 _Sometimes, when she did catch sight of him, she would wave to him and smile shyly and he'd wave back and smile like a fool, not knowing what to say, suddenly. She'd never seemed caught out, or creeped out by him appearing around the block of houses she had lived at though. She'd been full of trust and naivety since he'd first met her when she'd first moved to Derry._

 _At times, the fact would bake him frown and worry, for she never seemed to fear even the worst of kids, nor adults. Not that Angelica Piper had much to fear from bullies. She was a perfectly normal, kind-hearted girl. She wasn't a stuttering freak with a dead brother like he had been. Yeah sure, she got on the richer girls' nerves, more because of her intellect, than anything; but being a nerd, it turned out, was only one of the many pieces of criteria you'd have to tick to get on Henry Bower's hit list._

 _"Hello, William."_

 _A faint trace of embarrassment spread over Bill's face. He spun around to see Angelica standing there, looking up at him with those hazel eyes of hers._

 _He waved at her, smiling sheepishly, before taking a step back... tumbling against his bicycle as he did so._

 _She didn't laugh, but smiled apologetically, before reaching out a hand. "You are the boy from my class, one of the quiet ones, aren't you?" she asked as if perhaps thinking she might have gotten his name wrong._

 _He quickly nodded, feeling like a complete idiot._

What a whelp! Little squirt Will's lost his voice again?

 _He could hear Henry's taunting words again and stepped away, hoping that running from her would save him from Henry._

 _"You alright?" Angelica's voice purged those thoughts away._

 _"Uhuh."_

 _"Well, I was wondering... if you wanted some company... you know, hang around a little?" She asked, but looked down immediately._

 _Something inside him did a summersault. Voices screamed at him to accept the invitation and act about it like a man, not a wimp. Though there were those that cowered in the little corners of his mind, telling him that this was a terrible idea. If Henry Bowers found him with Angelica... Who knew what he would do to him, never mind Angie._

 _His selfish heart had decided though. "Y-yuh-yeah, sure," he responded, "that'd b-be great."_

 _She smiled, before leading the way - and the conversation, for the most part. Whether she had or hadn't noticed Bill's stammer, she made no comment, nor had Bill realised that she had never once laughed, even when he had continued to stammer. And slowly, it receded too, by the time they had gotten to the park._

 _She'd even giggled at a joked he'd cracked, much to his joy, even if his language had been more than a little inappropriate for his age. In hindsight, he should have probably talked to her, to begin with._

 _"A-Angie?" He asked at the swings, as the position of the sun in the sky signalled that soon enough, they would have to go their own ways. Curfew, that restrictive, ungodly thing that sucked the fun out of everything and at the same time protected them from the same evil that had most certainly killed his brother, was coming._

 _"Hmm?" The brunet that had kept him company that day responded from the other swing, with a smile on her face and a little colour to her cheeks._

 _"W-wa-want to meet huh-huh-here tomorrow?"_

 _She hopped off the swing. At first, he'd worried that it had been a decline, but she only smiled more widely and for a moment, he thought the world around them was just a little brighter as she did. "I'd love to, Bill," she answered uttering the name he'd asked her to call him during their time together._

 _With that, she left him at the swings, to smile for himself, probably looking ridiculous. But if he ever gave a damn about looking ridiculous, it certainly wasn't now. Perhaps his friends - if he met them on the way home - would question him, but if they did, he wouldn't care. Even as he absentmindedly past by Henry Bowers, his only thought was on tomorrow._

 _But they say, tomorrow never comes. Bill had learned to listen when adults say something, though he'd really wished to see her again. However, not even as he waited in the park, could he spot her in that checked skirt, knee-high socks, dress shoes and cardigan of hers. He'd waited half an hour. Then another. Then longer still._

 _Swinging on those swings, listening to them creak and groan with old age. Looking to the miserable-looking sky, asking himself if perhaps this was just a very cruel prank, a joke. Then worrying, begging that she hadn't been hurt, praying that she was simply grounded, nothing else._

 _Yet, as he walked through the streets, the next day and the day after, she wasn't there. Nor was she at any of the shops. Or the park. Nowhere near the dam either._

 _Nor was Angie there the next day. Nor the day after. By then, Missing signs had been put up and the newsletters had featured yet another case of a lost child._

 _He'd stammered uncontrollably when his friends asked him about his behaviour. He'd excused himself from dinner that third night. It was two people now, in his head. The total was higher, but he really didn't give. He'd only lost two in his mind. Angie being the second one._

 _Haunting him like Georgie. Fading out if his mind, like his little brother._

* * *

What Bill didn't know and what he is probably better off not knowing was that Angie had never died, even though Derry claimed her dead. But she hadn't intended to run either. She cared for Bill Denbrough but didn't want him to get into trouble for it. She had to run, she had to hide. Hide from everything and hide everyone from herself.

It was a shame that their new friendship ended as soon as it had begun. Though when It appeared, lurking in its true form, she knew she couldn't stick around, and not just because of it - there were millions of others stalking around, not just near Derry, but all over America. It had been quite by mistake and regrettably that she had failed to lure away the cruellest beast of the lot, the shapeshifting monster that everyone but Angelica referred to as 'It'. She would look back at that failure each time she'd return in hope of ensuring Derry's peace. For once, she could have succeeded. It would have spared so many lives.

But at least Bill lived... for now.

With hazel eyes, she'd watch, whenever she could, but with more beasts on her tail than she would have cared for, she needed to keep her distance. Even if it meant that she would be slowly fading from his mind; his memory, until was nothing left of her.

 **A/N – Angelica is an O.C, not an actual character. She's a bit of a strange one, much like the "turtle", she is the good to the bad that turns up in Derry. Though because she isn't all-powerful, she couldn't change the fates of the Losers group and failed to get rid of It by herself.**

 **As for the gaps in this one-shot, I have only read this book once and there's a lot of details one might miss.**


End file.
